001[Music] y [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are in session we just came from executive session so thank you for waiting for us um we'd like to at this point stand for a moment of silence please Adam I think it's appropriate that you lead us into pledge this evening please flag United States indivisible with liy and justice for welcome everyone nice to see uh some people in the audience great to have you participated in this process the emergency evacuation procedure in case of an emergency would everyone please follow the exit signs to the outside of the building please stay completely clear of the building to provide space for any emergency vehicles thank you for that uh item two is the approval of the agenda
002I need a motion please Elizabeth Elizabeth second Lisa Lisa any comments or questions on this evening's agenda seeing none all in favor say I I I any opposed exensions motion carried thank you item three superintendent update Dr tanova please thank you Mr delua uh my first update is a thank you to the Victor Central School District Community for the successful capital vote uh Capital project vote uh because of uh the commitment of this community and the leadership of our Board of Education we're going to have significant positive impact on our overall space needs we're going to improve Safety and Security of our facilities which also includes additional parking we're going to take care of repairs in a timely and financially prudent manner and we're going to stay ahead of the curve in terms of innovation
003across all of our buildings for educational offerings and programs including a brand new career in technical education center uh that was the former bus garage so it's I think it's a game Cher and uh we'll certainly give updates as we move through the process but a huge thank you to the community and the board of education for your leadership around that also want to uh and I know we're going to get to this in a couple minutes but thank our veterans as you know Veterans Day was this past Monday celebrates the service of all of our military veterans who served in the active military uh we thank them for their service and uh certainly we're going to talk more about that in honor them in a in a couple minutes and I also last want
004to give a shout out to our PTSA uh they not only are are looking for ways to support student staff and families uh but they're but they're also collaborating with our school district to help try to find more substitutes which is sorely needed right now so they're putting out a statement like they did last year to all of their the PTA members saying VCS is looking for daily teacher substitutes as well as teacher Aid substitutes flexible scheduling is available with full day or half day opportunities in all of our buildings assignments are typically to cover one class for the entirety of the time but there may be assignments that provide an opportunity to support a few different classrooms we are setting a goal the PTSA and the district to try to find at least five
005parents from each of our buildings to show an interest in subbing uh to really help get be a part of the school day and help our help our subbing situation so just a great another example of the leadership of the PTSA and uh certainly I would put a plugin for those that haven't joined to think about joining our amazing Victor PTSA that's my superintendent update for this month thank you Dr tanova item four is uh our veteran appreciation recognition uh this evening as most of you know earlier this month we celebrated Veterans Day a time for us to pay our respects to those who have served our country for one day We Stand United in respect for our veterans the Veterans Day holiday started as a day to reflect upon the heroism of those who
006died in our country's service and was originally called armus day it fell on November 11th because that is the univers anniversary of the signing of the Armistice with that ended World War I however in 1954 the holiday was changed to Veterans Day to account for all veterans in all wars BCS has many veterans this year as in years past our communication Department reached out to all staff asking for them to submit their years of service and photos for recognition on social media and here tonight as you see uh some of them displayed this evening on the screen while not all of our VCS veterans chose to participate in this recognition I believe that those who did represent all our veterans in their commitment to our country in the words of former president Harry S Truman
007our debt to the heroic men and Valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid they have earned our undying gratitude America will never forget their sacrifices please take the next few moments to silently reflect on not only our VCS veterans but all veterans thank you nice picture doesn't AG does not AG yeah okay um item five is public participation I forgot uh to mention the reminder that you should have signed up uh at the table in the back of the room to speak no signatures no one signed up okay item five is complete then item six acceptance of consent items uh we have 6A through oh this evening um entertain a motion please so moved so moved by Christopher I hear a second Elizabeth Elizabeth any comments or questions on these
008items from anyone seeing or hearing none all in favor say I I I any opposed exensions motion carried thank you I item 7A campus news we have our first person coming on board here first victim good evening um wanted to say happy Veterans Day and thank you to all of our veterans uh for serving our country and their sacrifice uh to help make our country and our community what a great the great place that it is to be here uh every day to learn and grow as a community my name's Rob D Ro the principal of the Early Childhood school many positive updates as usual to share about the recent events at our school this month our school partnered with our Girl Scout Troops to support Victor Farmington area families for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday
009each class at the ECS was encouraged to bring in a specific item that was requested in an effort to make at least 30 Thanksgiving baskets in total our students brought in nearly 500 items for the Thanksgiving baskets which will be distributed by our school district social workers in the coming school days before the Thanksgiving holiday so the Girl Scouts wanted 30 baskets but we had enough items to make 50 baskets which we're really proud of and excited about in addition to this food collection each classroom decorated a large turkey feather focused on the theme of gratitude this feather was added to a large grat turkey in our main hallway if you haven't had a chance to walk down Clifford Court uh you should do so before you head out today because you'll uh just bring
010a smile to your face to see those gred turkeys and a big thank you to our Infamous kindness Ambassador Mrs Kim Galina uh and our new school social worker Prima sahala for their hard work on this positive Community collaboration project yesterday to celebrate World kindness day our school had a kindness rocks assembly students gathered to sing our school song watch a staff skit about the power of kindness learn about an upcoming schoolwide project and then finish the gathering with a rousing rendition of an original Naomi Foley song called go for the gold this song is many of our students absolute favorite song of all the songs and uh it's a great way for families and children teachers and staff to sing about and remember the power of following the Golden Rule and treating people how
011we want to be treated Naomi wrote and recorded this song she along with our other incredible music teacher Miss Megan DC taught all of the students the song so that it could be sung together out loud and proud along with some s language speaking of the upcoming schoolwide project connected to our community read our school is partnering with our PTSA to work on a kindness project classes will all read the story a little spot of kindness each class has received their own copy of the book and each student will paint their own little spot of kindness using a rock which they will take home with them and be encouraged to set in the community to spread kindness to others so if you keep your eye out in the Victor area this winter and spring you
012may stumble upon a spot of kindness along the trail or in your neighborhood and we hope that it brings you in your family Joy teachers are hard at work on student progress reports families will be able to access their child's report card on December 4th and teachers are looking forward to connecting with our families during the upcoming parent teacher conferences this is a wonderful time for our teachers to continue to partner with our families as we strive for a successful and positive school year for every student here at the ECS wishing everyone here a happy and safe and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday thank you good evening everyone Heidi Rob the principal at the primary school thank you to all of our veterans in this room right now Adam thank you and to all the veterans at
013Victor schools as I've shared in previous meetings one of the goals that we have at the primary school this year is to build a strong sense of community we had two events in October to do just that one of them was bringing back the Halloween parade that existed at the primary school prior to covid and this was the first year that the entire School participated in the Halloween parade again and we were able to do that on the Bus Loop and watch each other march by and our Victor intermediate students were able to to um watch the parade as well and if you could have seen it I don't know that you've ever seen so many Josh Allens or Taylor Swifts in one location but it was pretty exciting um in addition in October Mrs
014burn and I did read alouds with each of the classes um our Focus for that read aloud was caring for others so we reviewed our schoolwide expectations and what that looks like and sounds like to care for others and then we read a book to students a favorite of Room on the Broom and there's a character in that book that's a witch who shows kindness in so many ways and the students were able to share with each other in their buddy class how the witch show kindness to others and then we left that time together where they shared a goal and made one goal for themselves about something they could do even better to show care for others at the school lastly on an academic note our teams um at the primary School met at
015the end of October for our first data days to determine students that would be receiving or continuing um inter academic intervention services we were able to celebrate many students exiting AIS in reading and math in all we exited 28 students from Ela AIS and 22 students from math AIS at the primary school the conversations we had about those students were thought ful and it was so wonderful to celebrate their success I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving good evening everyone pleased to share an update on the exciting things happening at Victor Intermediate School this month our students have been focusing this month on the character trait of gratitude as a part of our monthly character education program to highlight this our sixth grade student council members created a video that models how we can
016show gratitude in the various areas of the Intermediate School whether it's in the cafeteria the library um or just all around the school in the nurses office um they really did a nice job of showcasing what gratitude looks like and sounds like for everyone and we were able to watch that at our grade level assemblies and ask students what they noticed about things happening in the video so was a really a really great way for um students to reflect on how they can show appreciation in their everyday interactions with with everyone at at at V in honor of Veterans Day we also had a very special celebration on Friday November 8th we invited veterans with personal connections to our students into the school to share their their experiences and stories about their time um serving
017in the armed forces it was a great moving event for both students and staff and we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to those who really spent a lot of time organizing this event so special thank you to Alex kushel Natalie sville and our PTSA for helping organizing this uh really meaningful day for everyone lastly we are really excited to welcome a new member to our V family our new therapy dog Hank um starting this week uh Hank will be visiting our school about once a week and classes will have the opportunity to sign up to have him come into their rooms we're thrilled to have him join us as a part of our uh commitment to supporting the social and emotional well-being of our students thank you all for your continued support and
018partnership and making these great experiences possible for our students and um I'd like to Echo what everyone else said about thank you to our veterans and hopefully hope everyone has a good holiday uh over the upcoming weeks good evening uh my name is Brian G the principal of the Junior High School uh so we've got a few highlights uh coming up first as we talk about one of our goals which is helping our stud students stay connected to their school Community uh we've got three opportunities coming up uh this month uh in November and into December we really highlight that the first is that we're going to have our musicians uh play for our faculty in our December holiday uh faculty meeting something new this year but the idea is to get kids to be
019able to play in front of their teachers and kind of you know outside of the traditional concert schedule and our music department took that a step further to create small combos uh within each of their areas to be able to kind of travel so that the days leading up to the holiday break we'll have hallway music uh teachers will be able to sign up to have the combos come and visit their class to be able to perform as a way to start having our students performing for their friends uh as well so we're very excited about that uh coming up this next month and we're also well into our planning for food drives to help support the district initiative and efforts around that as we look to support our families uh and our communities that
020need help around the holidays as far as uh looking at increased opportunities for engagement our Building Council last year uh really looked at how do we help maximize the amount of time we have with kids in our building meaning study halls and so one of the ideas was to create our internship program I've talked about that before that's up and running we have 35 students right now participating in a variety of different internships we've also been able to expand our enrichment offerings uh and in particular we have two that are going to start this spring that we were not able to run in the fall one will be as coach coding based tech-based program uh with John Hannah and then Nicole sedlock a new math teacher to our building this year uh came to me
021with an idea about having a financial literacy in uh enrichment really tailored and built specifically for middle level students so we met the other day and we're very excited that we'll be having both of those as opportunities to continue to engage our kids in different types of learning uh experiences and we also ran our mock trial every four years and we have a large election we do that uh and it was tied to students learning about the electorial college but also the importance of participating it was an optional uh election done digitally we had over 470 students participate out of 608 potential students so our our participation rate was extremely high we truly celebrated that and then lastly I'd like to Echo what Heidi said we did also have our data days recently we've seen
022a great deal of improvement even within that first 10 weeks of school even a little bit less than that of students making great prog ress and that really goes back to the support that our teachers are able to provide particularly in some of our AIS in really specialized support programs so we're seeing a lot of growth out of our kids through a lot of hard work from people supporting them thank you very much thanks hello everyone my name is Brian cesso I'm principal at Victor Senior High School have a few updates to share uh with you this month uh every year during uh the November uh board update I give an update around how many of our seniors are applying for early action decisions at their colleges um this year we have over 60% of
023our seniors who have applied uh for early action tomorrow is the deadline for early decision this is a pretty big number uh two years ago we were at 30% of the senior class who did this last year it was 38% this year it went up by over 20% uh 60% um this number has been obviously increasing uh over the last few years but I want to bring it up uh to highlight how many strong students we have who want to decide early what they're going to be doing um once they graduate from Victor it is also a very direct connection to the strong College summer camp that we have where seniors are coming into the school year in September with their Naviance um application set up and their college essays written I want to give
024a special thanks to Aaron Jacobs uh and English teachers de mcmanis Matt M and Emily pichelli who helped lead the summer college Camp um Aaron is also doing some college workshops three days a week where she works with small groups of seniors on their individual applications um and kids are signing up like crazy to do this so um it really is starting off the year very strong for our for our senior class and it's good to see also want to give a couple of congratulations uh this month uh one is to um our one of our um teachers in the high school Christy rosinski who is an enl teacher she is being presented tomorrow night at the Hyatt Regency with the New York's 2024 New York State enl High School teacher of the year award
025um through uh the teachers College of Columbia University um she was nominated by Kenan Cardona who is an enl teacher here at the ECS um it's a great tribute to Christie and the work she's done during her career um across the campus uh working with students um who who who are teach who are speakers of languages other than English so I want to congratulate uh Christie also want to give an update on Brody Stewart Brody was recognized I believe last month at the board meeting um he participated in the National Civic speed Championship last weekend in Washington DC he wrote a really nice updated uh email to Dr tanova um he it was a two-day event where uh they visited world the World War II Memorial in the morning and then in the afternoon he
026participated in the first round of the championship which was a group activity where um they had to where they were scored on how well they they cooperated and addressed a problem and then on day two um it was an individual multiple choice uh question session they had to do with Civics um and he was very grateful uh for the opportunity and the support um from our community and the Board of Education in Dr teranova so I wanted to make sure that I gave an update about bro and I also wanted to give an update uh one of our goals this year is concentrating on um our students and our work-based learning program just a a quick update that we right now have over 70 individual students who are participating in our work-based learning program either
027through job Shadows off-campus or oncampus internships uh work study and career exploration programs and we also have full classes that are uh doing job Shadows with accounting or Finance firms so we we are actually well over 100 students who are somehow participating in this program so I want to thank Sue UTS uh Carrie Goodell and Karen fter for for really helping to guide and shape this program it's been a huge success and I also want to give a heartfelt thanks uh to all of our veterans our social studies classes um this week spent some time talking about the importance of veterans and in many of the classes it coincides with um the curriculum around uh the world wars especially World War I uh this is the time of year where they they cover some of
028that material in the US History classes so it was a good merging of of talking about the importance of that day from a historical but also a national standpoint so that's our update this month thank you thanks okay there you have the November edition of Campus news stay tuned for the December Edition where maybe snow day projections might be talked about we'll see okay 7B Equity audit Dr tanova please so good evening everybody just gonna see if this is on awesome job anyhow uh I'm here to discuss the uh Equity audit uh and I want to first talk a little bit about why we're doing this where it came from then I want to discuss a little bit about what we've done so far and then the steps we're going to take in the next
029few months to complete it and then next steps around what to do with what we find out from this audit so everything flows from our fiveyear strategic plan uh from that fiveyear strategic plan it led to this past Year's 23 24 management plan which led to the development of the diversity Equity inclusion committee that ultimately worked actually over a year to a year and a half on recommendations uh from that committee and one of the major recommendations was to complete an equity audit to really review what it really says an audit of our Equity across the district both holistically and as far as our subgroups especially are marginalized subgroups the one thing I will say about this is probably the most important Equity equalizer that we have in this district is our teachers and the
030classroom instruction that's going on and so uh you heard some of the some of the comments from our principles around some of the things going on in our classrooms you're going to see an amazing group of teachers get up here in a few minutes as soon as I stop talking to discuss uh a what a culturally responsive student centered classroom really looks like and take out the buzzwords what does it actually look like in terms of an everyday classroom those are the types of things that are going to make the biggest difference to get all kids to lift all kids to the highest level and when you combine that type of instruction that's permeating throughout all our buildings with this real Focus especially as kids get into the secondary level of having real world learning
031experiences like you heard with the internship opportunities at the high school where they can immerse themselves in skills but in real life experiences and jobs may or may not end up in that's what we really are striving for so that's one major piece of what we do but we're also looking at our overall equity and and what does that mean so uh the goal is to use data to inform how VC vcsd nurtures a welcoming safe and inclusive community specifically seeking to understand how how much our students feel like they belong here what's our academic performance across all subgroups and what's our kids kids access to supports and extracurricular opportunities and academics and all the different things that we offer at Victor Central School District we've uh consulted out with the University of Rochester who's
032doing a lot of the leg work uh Dr Kaku OK Conor as well as Dr McHugh they're leading the effort and we've just started this process so I just wanted to give the board an update where we are um we started in this with over the summer with with these three questions looking at Equitable access to academic opportunities uh Equitable access to the Performing Arts and then starting to take a look at our welcoming and safe and inclusive community and and do kids belong or not so we've just started this um so some of the things we the University of Rochester has already analyzed is some is some data around do and dual enrollment participation of uh for kids taking dual enrollment classes that count for college credit certainly our grade nine credit acrel at
033the end of nth grade where do our kids stand because if we get them at uh course level and getting all the credits that they're supposed to have they have a much better chance of graduating on time and graduation rates we've really only looked at the first two bullets so far we haven't even gotten to the graduation rates or as you saw the previous slide we're still analyzing the AP results we look specifically at musical Ensemble participation and we took a deep dive into uh Panorama student surveys those are surveys that are already given to kids uh and trying to piece through that data to see if it can get to a sense of student belonging or not what did we find I'm not going to read these word for word but in three areas
034this is a initial preliminary findings again with by just looking at a a small amount of the data that we can look at in terms of ninth grade credit acrs overall it was very positive with uh lots of different uh groups especially marginalized groups that are being very successful in their credit in their credits at the end of 9th grade we do have some discrepancy for students with disabilities as well as from students from families who are economically challenged so that's some data points that we want to look at further in terms of uh kids taking dual enrollment courses again we haven't actually got to the AP data yet so it's really specific to dual courses dual enrollment courses and they're also very similar across our subgroups in terms of performance with some discrepancy for
035students with disabilities and our males in other words our females our female students are taking more advantage of dual enrollment classes currently than our male students and then in terms of musical ensembles there was a very similar data in terms of participation and that goes from grade by the way grades two through 12 because we started two and three especially with the Suzuki Strings program um so anyhow in terms of participation in music music it was pretty equal across the different subgroups although there is a major discrepancy again between males and females which which uh females having a much greater participation in our musical ensembles than males I want to show you just a little bit of the data that uh you have are presented to us tied to that last piece around music um
036so the guiding questions were who participates in musical ensembles and our differences in participation rates uh 1394 students particip ipate in musical ensembles that's roughly 40 to 45% of uh kids in second through 12th grade so that's a pretty big percentage and 21% of those kids participate in more than two musical ensembles uh these are some of the charts I'll just quickly go over I'm not going to go over every data set but uh the First Column number of students in musical ensembles so that's so there's 886 female students in musical ensembles uh the percent of students in musical ensembles that are female are 63.6% as opposed to 36.3% of males the percent of students in terms of overall Victor Central School District male and female ratio is roughly 50 to 49% So based upon
037the percent of students uh broken up between male and female you'd expect more of a 5050 breakdown in students participating in musical ensembles that's not the case there's significantly more female students than male students and the percentage of female students so the percentage of the 886 female students that actually are in a musical Ensemble is 43% that's the last column so that's the percentage of kids from that subgroup that participate in what we're looking at and so we have multiple charts that show information like this this is just one example uh this is another example in terms of Music participation uh and you'll see this is actually pretty similar uh in terms of so if you look at um Hispanic or Latino 88 students uh are in musical ensembles uh that are Hispanic or Latino
038uh the percent of students in the entire musical Ensemble that are Hispanic or Latino is 6.3% and 8% of our total student body is Hispanic or Latino so the 6.3 is relatively close to the 8% which isn't a bad thing uh and that means that last column means 20 7% of the 88 kids are participating in a musical Ensemble would we want more of course but this is just straight data that we found um through this study in terms of a welcoming and Safe Community uh we really comb the University of Rochester along with Karen fter and her leadership comb through the survey data that we currently give to students uh this is through the Panorama program and it's actually been a huge resource for us to really try to get a sense of the
039social emotional well-being of kids so you'll see questions that were really asked like how often do teachers encourage you to learn about people from different races these are just examples uh how often do you think about what someone from a race ethnicity or cultural experience how confident are you that students in your school can have honest conversations with with each other we have information about that um we also have social emotional data social emotional learning data from the Panorama uh program and this really gets into those things like self-management uh social awareness self-awareness grit as they said emotional regulation decision making we have data on that what we don't have yet is data on whether individual kids as well as groups of students feel how how much they feel like they belong in the Victor
040Central School District culture how are they feeling about their own differences and and uh things that are similar to other students do they see similari ities as strengths do they do they see differences as strengths instead of weaknesses those types of information haven't we couldn't find in this Panorama data but we did find some so this really summarizes what we need to do next in terms of that last question around do kids belong at Victor feel like they belong at Victor Central School District um we certainly have data that can build on those types of feelings of belonging but we need to see what these building blocks have done for students s of belonging through digging further into some of the current survey data as well as administering further uh surveys and potentially potential focus
041groups so we're right at the initial stages of this Equity audit in terms of next steps we uh if you look at the Bold I'm not going to read all of them though but if you go back to those three questions what is Victor how do we ensure Equitable access to academic opportunities and when we use the word opportunities we're really it's not just opportunities but performance how are our kids performing academically and how many opportunities do they have uh we have a lot of work to study there in terms of academic Support Services the AP data Regent results three through eight State results we also want to really dig deeper into Equitable access to extracurricular opportunities beyond music you can see some of those there and then certainly how do we ensure that welcoming
042safe and inclusive community how are our kids feeling in terms of belonging here uh we got to look through existing data but we are going to through the University of Rochester support uh really uh administer some more surveys to our students uh potentially also our community as well as have some focused groups of kids across the district to really get their input so in terms of a timeline uh we're currently gathering and analyzing additional quantitative data and then in December and January we're going to be provided instruments to to Really revise and and frame the way we want them as a district in terms of surveys and focus groups that'll be shared with staff we're going to use the shared decision making groups across buildings to help with those survey development certainly the Board of
043Education will see it and then we would like to administer those surveys and focus groups and continue the analysis of further data uh February and March ultimately leading to a presentation of findings and all that is is this is who we are as a district in terms of the questions we're asking then the hard work begins which is celebrating where our successes are and then looking at where areas we can improve and focusing on that and strategizing that through a shared decision-making teams and our future management plans for the next couple years so that's just a kind of a sense of where we are with the equity audit uh and the timeline are there any questions uh from the Board of Education questions anyone Dr turnov on when you did the breakdown male female non-binary
044as far as participation you gave the numbers I'm just curious what is the breakdown of our entire student population second through 12 or if you could get that to us in terms of uh so what's the percentage if you did that chart oh okay just total population of students in grades 2 through 12 yeah I can get you that information thank you anything else yeah and to the board there is further charts like this and data so um as I give my weekly update to you if you would like more of that information I can easily access it to that so you could see further uh specific information so I can definitely provide that to the board yeah looks like a bunch of people are nodding So yeah thank you all right thank you thank
045you next on our agenda is a management Plan update culturally responsive student centered teaching by a number of talented people and I'm going to let them introduce themselves they're so far away all right well good evening everybody my name is Karen fter and I am the assistant superintendent for instruction here in Victor and it is my pleasure tonight to have um some wonderful Educators to share really with you what does a student centered culturally responsive classroom really look like right that that is language we've been using now for the last few years um through the work of not only our Dei plan but um some of our um annual management plan goals and what does that really mean so I'm going to provide a really brief little overview and then they're going to show you
046how it re daily looks within their classrooms so um you know just like the equity audit um this work Roots within our strategic plan um and part of our management plan work and this year in particular really supporting this type of instruction in classrooms knowing that it's not just about a group of students but really it's about all students how do we move the learning and achievement for all students and really support student access uccess and student achievement um by doing some things very intentionally and very focused um so that um all students can grow so our use of assessment data our use of um our plc's to form goals to really dive in all anchors back to this work um this hasn't come out of nowhere right New York state had a hand in
047it as well um as you know and may remember um back in 2018 New York State released uh a culturally responsive and sustaining education framework in it it talks about four principles really that support this work and it defines what student centered learning environments really are um we want to make sure that we're affirming cultural identities Foster positive academic outcomes develop students abilities to connect across lines of difference elevate historically marginalized voices Empower students as agents of social change and contribute to individual student engagement learning growth and achievement through the cultivation of critical thinking that's what we want for all of our students and so the framework really outlines various ways to do that here in our district we took that document we took um what we know to be best practice in teaching and
048learning and working with teach teachers and and through professional development and the very talented administrators across the district we put together what those look fors within a student centered culturally responsive classroom would be and these four L lookth throughs the groups what does a student centered classroom look like and sound like what does evidence of student thinking really look like so that students are independently able um to demonstrate their understanding in what does productive struggle or grappling with their learning independently look like and certainly what does that classroom environment a warm and welcoming environment really do to help support all of those things so tonight you're going to hear um from very talented teachers across the District of how these four components of a culturally responsive student centered classroom come to life in their practice
049so I'm going to turn it over now to Mrs step Stephanie Bach hi my name is Stephanie Bach I teach kindergarten here at the ECS and what you're looking at here is me focusing in on the element of student centered classrooms and in the top right you see a visual representation of what I show to my students every day for our Ela centers and in my eyes this is a prime example of our day that's student centered it's a 60-minute BL every single day and it starts off with about 5 to 10 minutes of direct instruction so that's just enough time for me to launch a new skill and then give them directions for what they're about to do and then we launch into that Visual and that's how they know what their job is
050during that rest of the 60-minute window of time so the colored blacks you see represent differentiated student groups so at all times I'm meeting with a small group for that um guided instruction and then we have enl teacher or a reading teacher or an aid who's also pulling groups to work with them and then the rest of the students are rotating between those may do which are independent choices that are all aligned to our learning Target for the day and they can do all of the choices in one day or they can do just one or two so that choice gives them flexibility in what they're doing but also how much time they're spending with certain tasks so that they're highly engaged the whole time and that they're really really taking ownership of their learning
051it allows for that autonomy that confidence building and even though there are youngest Learners at 4 to 6 years old they're really independent and engaged the entire time all right hi there I'm Hannah Morris and I teach English at the Junior High um I'm also going to focus on the concept of a student centered classroom but I can offer an example of what it could look like more at the secondary level so at the end of seventh grade we have the students complete a Research Unit and having almost an entire year to really build an understanding of themselves as readers and writers we find that at this point they are very prepared to be in the driver's seat and just drive the learning throughout the entire unit so all of our students are working on
052the same standards they're all seeking to learn how to um Identify some credible information and then produce a demonstration of their learning uh but they're able to make some choices throughout the entire process so the pathways that they take are very self-directed um each student initially chooses their pathway for the research process and it's really based on their level of confidence with their research skills so the first pathway is the most guided uh students who choose this one may feel as though they'd really appreciate more teaching in the research process the second pathway way is ideal for students who are ready for like a balance of some teaching and some Independence and our last pathway is for those who feel very confident in their research skills and can do it um mainly on their own
053and every year I'm always really impressed with the number of students who report that they are ready for a challenge and they can do it solo um next they choose the uh the topic that they're going to look into and then lastly they're able to choose the products they create so the goal for all Learners is to create a demonstration of what they've learned through the research process and have that on display in a research Expo um the students are encouraged to create something that resonates with them so some examples uh one student generated uh his own website he included some uh videos about his topic as well as two pieces of original writing uh whereas a different student uh decided to do a digital illustration and create a graphic novel in which the character's
054dialogue is weaving in facts that she found in her research so what I really appreciate about this project is that as a teacher I'm able to assess what they've learned but I'm also able to just understand them better as people thank you hi I'm Jen Hall and I'm lucky to be a fifth grade teacher at the intermediate building um I'm going to talk to you about one of the units that we teach and just how we've been able to tie it all together and give the kids some choice in time at the end to reflect on all their learning so that self-reflection piece and also to show the thinking that they did throughout the unit so one of our newer Humanities units is ancient civilization specifically in the Western Hemisphere and through the unit we
055explore and dig deep into the different ancient or the indigenous peoples that came to the Western Hemisphere where they decided to settle how they interacted with the environment how they had to adapt to the environment and then we also these are some of the learning targets that we go at trying to focus on how complex societies develop very similarly but they also have some unique differences within them so the kids also focus in on the geography of the Western Hemisphere and how it does affect them um it's a lot we focus specifically on the Aztec the Inca and the Maya and how their civilizations developed so some of the things that they focus in on is how all of those civilizations have specific jobs specific culture um celebrations things like that they all have a
056government of some kind they all have writing systems or language systems and they all have technology so they see that those are all the same throughout but then each of those civilizations contribute something uniquely to the area at the end of the unit we have a project which is one of my favorite projects the kids love it because the creativity comes in and they get to show bring in who they are as a person so I really do enjoy this it's called the land of imagination project um I have an example up here this is kville so the kids have to create their own complex society on the right side you can see I don't know if you can see it that well but they get to think about they pick a theme so Khloe
057Ville she picked hers it's all things Chloe um some kids have Swift yville We have you know Josh allent toown I mean the kids really get to bring in and I even have um a student this year that's doing a Jehovah's Witness uh City so really going to teach the rest of the class about his religion so I'm excited about where that's going um but if you look at it you know the jobs there's keyboard Engineers pineapple upside down cake bakers soccer players sores toaster so she's really you get to learn who they are but they also are showcasing the knowledge that they learn that student thinking that they did throughout the unit so it allows them you know to show their new skills transfer the knowledge um reflect and do that critical thinking so
058and then at the end they create a map to show where all the different physical features are and how their society adapted to their environment so it's a pretty cool project sorry if I talked too long I like to do that I just want to make a comment that I've been known to be a sorer on many occasion during the summer I I can identify I do too amazing um my name is Emily pelli I teach English n at the senior high school it's fantastic um and we've been really proud of ourselves for the past couple of years because we had recently integrated a new book into our curriculum in English n um that we specifically chose to be more culturally responsive and to respond to some needs and gaps that we were noticing in
059our students so to give them some sort of background knowledge we were noticing that it was hard for them to have these ations about culture as it pertains to the characters in the book which is very important to the uh unit um when they didn't really have an understanding of what culture meant to themselves so we have been working very closely with Cody Miller from Sunni Brockport who's been an incredible resource to us and he' noticed that when he taught the book in the past that was also a gap of his students so he brought this resource to us which are the intersecting identities Maps um this is kind of the stuff that you would write down checkboxes at the DMV it's all the stuff that's more observable about you it's the part of your
060culture that informs how the world interacts with you and for a lot of our students and I'll name particularly a lot of our white students um a lot of them had claimed that they didn't know they had a culture and so we took this opportunity to look at all these different things that come together and make who you are up um for some of these students they looked at some of these little Bubbles and they had no idea what to put they'd never thought about it before and so it kind of invited them into that self- exploration and self-reflection but some students they knew exactly who they are they know exactly what these words mean they know exactly what to write to down and so we were able to kind of Meet the students where
061they are and bring them all to these common understandings that we could then move forward in the unit with um but of course the observable things about you are not the only part of your culture and we wanted to make sure that they knew that so we added to uh this this year a values conversation so rather than just the things that make the world interact with you in a certain way the things that make you interact with the world in a certain way and we thought that that was really interesting so um what we did was we found a very simple article just on Google and we had it um posted for them to look at it had all these different common values all these different definitions and so some students chose what they
062believed were most important to them but we asked them okay you identify that this is important to you how does it show up for you and so for some students they were a little bit more unique for example up front and center frugality that was the only one that we had this year that identified that one and he was very self-reflective and he said well I'm very conservative with my money because I have to work for all of it and this is a 14-year-old student um authenticity the girl the bottom left you can definitely see it in her day-to-day life how she dresses how she acts it's lovely but for the more common ones it was also interesting because you see three students chose dependability and every single one of them said something different so
063for all of their values this opened up a conversation of okay you can be an individual and we can celebrate that difference but even if we all say that we value the same thing that can be completely different for all of us and that is something to celebrate and it's not something that should divide us it's something that we all have in common and it's fantastic so that's been really helpful not only in terms of our conversations about cultural um cultural responsive culture and all that stuff but also in understanding where characters are coming from developing empathy um it's made a world of difference hi I am Alex kushell I teach fourth grade Humanities at bis and I'm going to share an example from my classroom that um illuminates productive struggle last spring my class
064was studying the American Revolution and the students at the beginning of the unit um I taught them how to create their own research questions so we also talked about how important it is for researchers to choose a topic that they're really interested in and their research question needed to guide them through this entire integrated unit we were doing Reading Writing social studies speaking and listening they also knew that at the end um they were going to be creating an article that they would contribute to a class magazine that we were going to publish for each student and then finally in the picture you can see we uh each partnership was responsible for creating an exhibit within our American Revolution Museum that was open to other fourth grade classrooms to families to community members and the
065component of productive struggle that was really evident to me throughout this was students were so motivated to read resources that were at a fifth grade reading level and higher a lot of the resources that I had available to me are made for middle schoolers and it didn't matter they were ready to tackle it they worked through that with their Partners you um rarely see a group of nine-year-olds working independently on reading and writing for 80 minutes so it's really evident to me how um much this meant to them and how engaged they were and then at the end when they were in charge of creating their Museum um we had an opportunity to hear virtually from a museum designer in Massachusetts so again providing that authentic uh product really motivated the students to work independently
066and collaboratively to create these different museums to consider how they were going to incorporate their written elements and combine it with the visual and they actually even decided how to set up the room and you can see from their faces how proud they were um of all the work that they had put in hello my name is Quinton peacock and I'm a seventh grade social studies teacher um before I begin can you show me on your fingers one doing really good or five being really good one being not so good how are you feeling today okay that's good so if you can imagine I do this every single day every single class with my middle schoolers Middle School is really an anxious time time it's really a turbulent time for kids as they're starting to
067transition from more of a Elementary level to a secondary level so this is a six question survey that's done via Google form that I do every single class they know it's part of the daily routine it takes around 10 minutes and it's 10 questions um in this students are allowed to reflect on emotional and physical well-being in the classroom and outside the classroom but it's also a way for them to share and really bring back that affirm environment that they need especially in a middle school level um it is also a great tool for me because it's a digital copy so I am able to really allow for excellent student rapport with my students so I know what they're doing inside and outside the classroom um so some of these like I said it's six
068questions I ask their name their class how they're doing today what they're doing this weekend as well as um how they're feeling on a scale of 1 to 10 usually with a pumpkin info infographic or some other fun picture um and this allows students to take risk um and it allows me to see certain data so if I notice that for a period of time that one student is coming in and they are feeling terrible after a specific class I know that that is consistent and I can follow up with them later on um it also allows students to kind of allow themselves to look into others identities and cultures so um kind of as an example for that I had one student today say that she is going to start getting ready to celebrate
069Dali and I had her share with the class if she felt comfortable to um what diali is and what it means to her and she was more than welcome to but again that's something that some of my students have never heard of so it's really fascinating to see kids allow themselves to open up and create a warm and welcoming environment in the classroom so some of these examples are anything fun planned for this weekend just some simple stuff but again I might get some very interesting things like going to All State thank going to Tom walls afterwards um but then also I do polls and polls I think are the most important thing um these can be formative assessments so who won the French and Indian War allowing me to know access of what materials
070we should ret but then also it can be something that's kind of a little goofy to connect with them and it allows students especially in a social study setting to really practice those speaking and listening skills so they can go out into the community and be even better citizens so are listening to One Another they are speaking kindly and respectfully to one another and they are really creating this safe space within the classroom so that way it can they can go into the real world and feel that way um and I think bring it back to G yeah thanks so I hope tonight you've gotten a taste of these components of a culturally responsive student centered instructional model here in Victor we're going to continue to to chip away and continue this work where revising
071in curriculum you have in a packet in front of you a copy of the look fors document a uh snippet out of one of our third grade uh integrated Humanities units um the standards that are represented within that unit the Big Ideas um and some of the student work products from very uh early within that unit so you can get a sense of the depth of that work from Emily's students at the senior high all the way to our our third graders um we going to continue to engage in professional development and leveraging our faculty Department grade level meetings and programs like new educator orientation and induction to continue to build this Foundation of instructional practice and strong understanding um our collaborative planning processes through plcs align to those data driven goals really digging in
072to some of that data even the equity audit data that U Dr tanova mentioned and certainly through um our walk proves our supervision um and our observation process in supporting teachers in that uh collaborative way with our amazing uh administrative team and our amazing teachers putting heads together and really having deep conversations about teaching and learning in the student experience so with all of that we thank you any questions questions anyone no question just a a comment to say thank you to all of you for being here tonight and sharing these examples they're very powerful for us to see and also uh just remark and thank uh principal G who also gave us um a copy of the look Force when we are in our building visit at the junior high so it was really
073nice for us to have that opportunity to see what is being worked on by the teachers in the classroom and then to observe that ourselves in many of the classroom so thank all of you okay great thanks initially you were aligned by height but not anymore one uh obviously gratitude too and the one thing and the the last piece I I really think it's it's empowering too for the faculty which we have the amazing faculty and staff that getting into how they are because we talk about social emotional and mental health and really empowering you or putting you in positions to communicate with their school counselors and building admin to really support the students because you do deep dives into what they're doing every day I guess my question for all of you is one
074being not excited five being really excited show your hands about being at a board meeting on a Thursday night there you go okay thank you for all the work you do every day that's uh that's pretty Sigma I don't know what that means all right thank you thank you one and Alles that was great okay we are at 7D approve the following trips uh we have boys varsity lacrosse to leam New York 418 to 419 2025 to participate in the spring non-league games and students in grades 9 through 12 to Spain and Portugal from 6:30 to 7:10 of 2025 so a motion to approve these trips pleasee Elizabeth I heard yes second by Christopher yes uh any comments or questions about these trips can't wait to see the pictures yeah pictures I'll go to Spain
075and Portugal all right um I do have a question okay question in the past too then we'll end up there'll be a presentation from those trips usually when they're overseas at some of the board meetings did they did that last year for the French Club that's possible I don't want to at work for anybody but if they do those are amazing when the students able to present the trip to France the pictures are outstanding a yes okay anything else no all in favor say I I I any opposed exensions motion carried thank you item eight eating reports monor County School Board Association committee reports I have to say that because I was Grandpa Uber in New York City for few weeks I I haven't attended any so I don't have any reports the one that
076I typically attend monthly via Zoom has not happened yet so I can give an update in December okay I did the um we had our ipac meeting yesterday which is a standing committee I guess um and they uh are two uh inquiry um teachers or exploration teachers are just amazing and you the the pullout programs that they're doing with students in 1 through sixth are um it's it's just amazing to see what you know second graders are doing and third graders they kind of uh third graders were developing a whole survey and um implementing it and you know going through the whole process um there's just amazing stuff that they're doing um the kids are using Cana and uh then they go back and they're just like as they're talking to their friends they're kind
077of of explaining to them how to use it so it's wonderful to see that um you know uh you know it's spreading across the classroom you know that uh TurnKey kind of education uh and in intermediate they're um uh you're doing amazing things like the stock market game and you know ancient math and word Wizards and stuff so there's just a lot of exciting education going on and it's it they can because they're smaller classrooms they can uh really move quickly and evolve and you do kind of try different teaching aspects uh so it's really an exciting thing and it is something that not every school district has so we are very lucky at Victor and we really need to support them um I would love to see them grow and have uh more teachers
078uh but that was a wonderful check-in point there and then in October Elizabeth and I went to the New York State School Board Association conference in uh New York City and that was just you know full a two days full of um different sessions from different presenters I you know at times I wish I could have been at three of them at the same time you know it's like it there was just a wealth of information uh things to look forward to um some of the Hot Topics were like the foundation Aid formula um that uh the like some sort of report should be coming out December first about um where the foundation Aid formula is and um that the talk is that there won't be a specific new formula but there will be um
079some more guidelines and uh reporting on that uh there was a lot of uh talk about artificial intelligence and how we need to incorporate it in education H but not lose the human aspect you know let AI take over things so that you have more time to to to be uh to do the human aspect of of teaching um there were some sessions on dealing with student behavior and um how you uh how to address issues um even employee issues and things like that um there was a nice panel with uh the commissioner Dr Rosa um and she was very insightful on uh lots of different topics um just kind of went uh from topic to topic and some of the big ones are Equity across the State you know some districts have X Y
080and Z and some districts only have X you know it's like who try instead of taking away the um positive programs it's how do we ensure the positive programs and grow them in other districts uh so there's kind of a there seem to be a lot of thoughtful um listening tours kind of going around where they're going to different districts and seeing what's going on so that was wonderful um the Blue Ribbon commission I think they were just reporting on um new directions for uh the one diploma and um so they they've kind of been looking at things uh the she was saying like cell phone use is a big Hot Topic but um their suggestion is to kind of handle it locally as opposed to a Statewide um situation or Statewide um practices uh
081but they are trying to they want people to share their best practices so that um you know not everybody's Reinventing the wheel when it comes to that and they can share what works and what doesn't work um they are saying like you know everybody is running into Staffing shortages um and they're trying to look at the process like um how they've increased waivers for uh retired teachers to come back um and just they're trying to make it um not just hard like they they still want the you know right teachers in the right place they want um you know good teachers in uh classrooms but sometimes some of the systems are just hard for no reason so they're kind of looking at you know there's a difference between rigor and and just hard so um
082they are looking at streamlining some of the requirements and um some um increasing the certification waiver so that's good um and then one of the big hot topics was electric school buses I think that was the most animated session that I went into where they had a panel um some of the big takeaways is that uh we should if we haven't had it we should have a fleet electrification plan survey from nerta and they'll kind of give guidelines on what we need um the suggestions from most of the presenters was to start small um and just you know buy a bus or two um and kind of get used to it and see how it goes uh they had a presenter who has a fleet out of New York City and you know they have
083like 200 buses but they did invest in 25 electric and he's like and he was was saying like his drivers love it um people love them uh they you work out better than you think um the big issue like noise you know it's like if you're on a diesel bus and that starts your day every day you know it's like think of the mindset that our students are in when they get to school um if it was a quieter bus you know that we might see you know consequences from that we might see a positive um positive issues you know positive moving forward kind of thing so um so that was the suggestion is to start small and to look at the grants um there's like 500 million out there if um any kind of
084way to try to get any of the grants to help subsidize some of the purchases um and that was I think the the main takeaways but it was very informative it was um a wonderful opportunity so I appreciate the board letting me do that um just briefly some of the um sessions that I attended um nurturing the whole student through collaborative supportive systems um and I know that Caroline and I both sent um our notes to our colleagues but just um so that others can hear the experiences and the sessions that we attended um nurturing the whole student through a collaborative support system uh this was from connec City School District and they are um like a a real lead in this area uh Statewide talking about um um just holistic development and organizational decision
085making across all areas of their schools um and I know that I included a lot of those notes um to the colleague to my colleagues um I also attended engagement um using AI there was a lot of AI as Carol said um throughout the whole conference um looking at AI within the classroom Dan Fitzpatrick is um this Guru in AI education um after our uh keynote address that he gave he was heading over to Sweden for like a conference over there he's like you know World reown he's um out of the UK he was very fascinating to listen to and he has authored several books um and I had a chance to speak with him with a very small group of colleagues for about 45 minutes after his presentation um addressing student behavior on and
086off campus and kind of the legalities uh presented by school attorneys on what the school's responsible for and what they're not responsible for um and Carol and I I think we both attended that session and we kind of had to answer scenarios like throughout and it was good to know that like what Carol and I were answering was basically lock in Step as the procedures of what you should be doing as board members and the responsibility of the district so I felt good that you know we felt confident in our answers um strategies for Effective board meetings one thing that I forgot to grab on my way out tonight um on the way to the meeting but I bring it to our board retreat in December um one District I can't remember off hand who
087they had a board pamphlet like it's a three like a little trifold thing that they had out at board meetings um explaining the roles and functions of the board some initiatives that the board is um taking each year and I really liked that because it's an easy takeaway and I'm thinking even if people don't attend our public session in this space we do a lot of presentations um and award monies over in the auditorium across the hall and it might just be a way to further educate you know people who attend those pieces of our meeting on what the board does bless you um and the functions thereof um and then positive board and superintendent relationship which I feel that our group um does a really great job at there were several um criteria that
088you could self assess like where your board was at with their relationship with the superintendent I felt that you know we are definitely a strong um strong in our relationship with Dr teranova as a group and then um making sure that children are not marginalized and one big piece that came out of that it was this very um robust panel discussion um about implicit bias training as a board and it got me thinking about those opportunities that maybe our board could look into in the future um and how implicit bias plays into our subconscious decision- making about everything um and it was just it was a a colel that I took back to Rochester with me about um how we can explore that maybe as a group so again super grateful that we had the
089opportunity super grateful to have a colleague to Pal around with it was very was very fun um and extremely informative I learned a lot came home very tired but excited to to share possibilities with all of you okay thank you board members for those updates item nine upcoming events our next board meeting Thursday December 12th 2024 we'll talk about snow then too as well right and I also have one other thing um I did send an email out regarding the Four County School boards association meeting on November 25th and it's regarding the um update on the status of the foundation Aid it's at Club 86 in Geneva it's a dinner meeting if you plan on attending I have to have the information by I think I told you Friday Monday Monday to give you so
090I can get the reservations in by Wednesday um it is a dinner meeting so if you just do decide to go I just need to know dinner choice as well and then that's all in the email perfect he happen the speaker happened to be at the um uh he was one of the speakers at our conference um so he does have a lot of information the only thing is is like new one isn't like the um their report isn't due till December 1st so it's like ah I wish he would do it like the week after so could interpret okay anything else for the good of the district hearing nothing uh motion to adjourn ran Ryan second Lisa Adam oh Adam got me U all in favor say hi I any opposed or extensions we
091have had a meeting look at that okay thank you for